Commonwealth Games: Singapore take shooting gold

Martin Hannan

Scotland’s best chance of winning a shooting gold at the Commonwealth Games came down to the very last shot of the very last event of the tournament at Barry Buddon.

Coming from behind in the most exciting final of the entire six days of shooting, Jen McIntosh needed to score 0.7 points better than her opponent, the favourite, Jasmine Ser of Singapore, to win gold.

As the Scots in the audience at the 50m rifle three positions event willed her to victory, McIntosh “bottled it” – her words – and shot a 7.9, while Ser held her nerve.

“I knew she had a poor shot but I can’t think about it,” Ser revealed. She waited for the wind to die down, and calmly shot a 9.8 for victory.

McIntosh’s silver meant she became the new holder of the Scottish record for most Commonwealth medals, replacing her mother Shirley, also a shooter.

“I didn’t really go in with much in the way of expectations,” said McIntosh, who won bronze on Monday. “It was just a case of going out and performing and I am absolutely delighted.”

Overtaking her mum’s record was “pretty special” said McIntosh. “I’m kind of smug about that one, I’m not going to lie.

“It was 20 years ago that she won her medals, so I think it was time that the record was broken.”

Losing out so narrowly was an agonising way to end the tournament for Team Scotland’s shooting regiment, whose haul of two silvers and two bronzes was well down on Delhi 2010 where they won nine medals, including four golds.

Earlier in the day, Neil Stirton and Jon Hammond came fourth and fifth respectively in the 50m rifle three positions, while Ian Shaw and Angus McLeod came ninth and tenth in the full-bore rifle, and John Reid and John MacDonald also finished down the field in the men’s trap shooting.

The lack of success at Glasgow 2014 was perhaps one of the reasons why Sir Jackie Stewart, on hand to award the medals in the trap, called for the establishment of a national shooting centre, with the temporary nature of the excellent Barry Buddon facilities described by him as “a shame”.

Stewart, who shot for Scotland and Great Britain – he was reserve for the 1960 Olympics in Rome – said: “I am rather disappointed that this was not created as a permanent facility.

“I think it would have been a lot better for Scotland if, for the Commonwealth Games, it had been decided that a facility would be put into place which would have been there for future youth to be developed.

“If we had done that I think we would have seen far more new young shooters coming along, both men and women, boys and girls.

“You have to have something to crack it off with. This would have been a wonderful opportunity and in fact I went to the government about it when it was announced that we were going to have the Games, and I had hoped that it would be retained as a permanent facility. It is a shame that it is not.”

Stewart is worried that there will be no legacy from the shooting event: “It’s a sport that’s been going on a long time, it’s a sport that we have been good at, and it’s a sport that has its roots in Scotland. There will, I hope, be a permanent shooting facility, a national shooting ground, in Scotland. I hear there’s talk of that, and I hope that comes true. Then you will develop many more young shots who could, of course, go on to win gold medals in world championships for their country.

“I believe there are more good shooters from more slightly north than south, but probably a more central site would be good just to service the whole country. But wherever it would be put up, please make a good job of it, and then people will come from all over the world.”

Scotland’s shooters backed his call, with Neil Stirton saying: “It’s a shame that this facility is going to be taken down as it would be fantastic if we could keep it as a training venue.

“We could also bring other competitions here and host world-class events. That’s the only way that you improve.

“I lived in the States for a while at the Olympic training centre in Colorado Springs.

“Out there, everything is under one roof. We don’t have the dedicated facility. I believe there have been talks within sportscotland and the government to get one and I’m very hopeful that will come off.”

Jonathan Hammond, who is a shooting coach at the University of West Virginia, added: “I’ve been based in the US for 12 years but it would be great if they could have a world-class facility here. Scottish shooting needs it. We’ve been waiting for it for a long time and it quite possibly could have influenced my decision to go elsewhere. There wasn’t the resources, or the facilities or the set-up here so I went to the States. I haven’t looked back since.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.